The Glade 4.0

You don't feel that mistrust is warranted?

The irony here is that you have been asked a similiar question multiple times, yet seem to brush off critique about your "trust" of the federal government to do the right thing.

At least that my impression of your position over the years of posting.

If it was, then why wasn't that rectified before something happened?

Congress has basically said it believes that the CIA's leadership is dishonest and more interested in saving their political hide than protecting the country.

If that's the case, why weren't they removed before they failed?

Furthermore, such a judgement is a serious indictment of Obama, moreso than the failure to anticipate and prevent this tragedy. Failure of intelligence is one thing, allowing corruption and dishonesty to fester in your administration (and the Executive supervises the CIA) is another.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I could understand where you perhaps could get that impression. Irrelevant as it may be to the question at hand.

My views on the government are varied and nuanced, which is to say I don't treat the government as a single entity as far as what I do and don't trust them to do, etc.

I by and large do trust most of the various government entities to try and "do the right thing" for their normal day to day activities. So I think the CIA on a day to day basis is trying to protect the US and follow the rules, etc. Similarly I think the much maligned IRS is also trying to do that too.

However, where that trust starts to wain is when through malice, incompetence or accident an agency has **** up and the **** has hit the fan. In those situations, almost without exception, all those same organizations go into CYA mode and will often do whatever they can to cover up or downplay the damage that has been done. Additionally, in those situations there is also usually some evidence to show that there were warning signs that were ignored or misinterpreted, which further erodes that trust.

And for me personally, I also hold the CIA to a much more strigent standard, as this is an organization that is by design secretive and "underhanded" if you will in the way it operates (out of necessity) and so I'm more suspicious of it right out of the gate.

I would add, that I find a similar amount of irony in the posts that I commented on. As for all that most conservatives are quick to blast the government for it's miss management and inability to get their head of out their ***, they almost always are the first to defend the military or CIA and seem to aways assume those organizations are well run or above question.

The point is you are often dismissal in nature when asking people the very same type of questions you have just asked. The number of "heh"s and *eyerolls* over the years are pretty evident as such.

Not being a dick, just trying to demonstrate the point at hand.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

I was of the impression he would be facing federal court, which does not allow for the death penalty. However, one of the recent articles suggested that since it appears to just him operating alone and not a larger conspiracy, he will face the military courts.

I wouldn't go so far as to say Obama is somehow to blame for what happened. I think there is little you can do to prevent something like this when an individual is acting willfully.

My issue with Obama was his response immediately afterwards. For the first time since he's been in office, I was actually eagerly anticipating his response to this situation.

What did we get? Several minutes of confusing banter about whatever the American Indian issues of the day were, and then him giving a 'shout out to' an American Indian 'Medal of Honor Winner'.... who isn't a medal of honor winner (its a guy he presented a Medal of Freedom to previously.. sheesh, I know hes a newb, but he should know the difference between a Medal of Honor and a Medal of Freedom!!, especially in a speech where he's responding to an attack on a U.S. Military Base).

Even though I had extremely low expectations from him, I was literally stunned watching the first few minutes of this speech... My first thought was.. "holy shyt, the haven't even told him yet"... Then, when he finally addresses it he talked about it like it was just another bad day or something ( this was my impression ).

I was very disappointed (although in hindsight, I guess I shouldn't be surprised).

And in follow up, he is pissing off the German's more in trying to appease the US population.

Well I'd rather Obama piss off some Germans instead of his own people. (I mean citizens of the US not Kenya FYI.) Besides whats Germany going to do? We can just call them Nazis and they will be too busy apologizing to fight.

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A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. ~ John Stuart Mill

It's sad and I hope he gets life/death. Sometimes I think you guys are too PC to ask the necessary questions.

Does the Army still do death by firing squad? Seems appropriate.

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When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead?

Hanging, I think.

So, it's beginning to look more and more like he's a believer in the more "peaceful" aspects of the Religion of PeaceTM.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the gunman who killed 13 at America's Fort Hood military base, once gave a lecture to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

If the reports about the CIA are true, I get the uneasy feeling that they deliberately kept their mouths shut about this guy in the hopes that he would make contact with Al Qaeda and they could milk it for intelligence data. You have to admit it would be awfully tempting.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

I'd just like to point out that the order the sentence is written in, it is physically impossible to do one after the other.

It's not impossible, it just wouldn't have quite the same effect :p

Actually that makes total sense from what I imagine an intelligence agent's mindset to be.



So you believe that, in order to CYA, those agents, administrators, and directors would comment Federal-level fraud?

I do not, at least, not more than I do any other agency.



My point stands: the politicians have been building distrust in the CIA since 9/11. It has too much power, sucks too much money, and operates too independently for feel-good/power-hungry politicians to just let it slide. Sow distrust until you can garner enough support for additional Congressional oversight.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

It's politics. Perception always wins over substance, no matter how much substance you have. Ever wonder how Bush Sr. managed to lose an election despite 90% approval, great foreign policy, and winning a war? He tried to go the substance angle with his campaign.

I'm not sure why you would want to hold Obama to an absurd standard just because Bush was held to one. It makes you look just as absurd as the libs.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Even if he were not operating alone, I don't think his case could be moved out of the military court system for the convenience of the government. In fact, I don't believe it could at all, but I have never examined that aspect of military law.

If it were easy to do so, many soldiers would try to move their own cases to the civilian courts simply because they perceive the military as having more of a weight in favor of guilt (true in Article 15 cases simply because they're not actually courts, but really not true in actual Courts Martial).

I conducted a summary court-martial while I was depolyed (summary courts-martial are conducted by a single officer in the rank of Captain or higher who is the judge, prosecutor, and defense all in one; possible punishments are very very limited compared to general courts-martial). I ended up finding the soldier not guilty on both counts, after a day and a half of testimony. That was rather lengthy for a summary, but that's how it's done. Somewhat of a tangent there, but anyhow I don't recall ever hearing anything about any option for either the soldier or the government to move things to civilian courts This was a much more minor matter though.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I think you should have more than an uneasy feeling. That's pretty common practice in drug-ring busting, racketerring-busting, counterintelligence and intelligence. If someone can lead you to the bigger fish you don't want to pick them up until they do.

Most of the time the problem doesn't get this serious, but it more often leads to a thing of the bigger fish giving you an even BIGGER one, and him giving you one bigger still... and you never pick anyone up in hopes you may finally get a shot at that big one that's really out-of-reach, and nothing gets done.

There's also the simple problem of different government agencies not wanting to share turf. The CIA may have feared the DOD, not giving a **** about this one project and worried about safety, would bust Hasan, and they'd never get the next bigger fish. I doubt very much anyone thought this was going to happen; they just couldn't take their eye off the ball and turf wars probably were a factor too. And now, here we stand.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The meme going around on this now with regards to all the red flags on this guy is a highly sarcastic "Let's not jump to conclusions!"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... id=topnews




Ok then.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

I don't believe it's as black and white as that. There may be some people who would do what you describe. However, there are also plenty of people who will attempt to downplay and obfuscate the issue while staying within at least the grey area of ethics.

Except that isn't what telling them to "preserve documents" means. Period.

It means that you expect them to intentionally lose or destroy documentation. That's fraud. Therefore, telling them to preserve documents is essentially saying "I believe you wish to commit fraud to CYA, and I'm requesting in public that you not do so."


There is no grey area there, that's what that statement means. Now, if you wish to retract your original statement then about believing the CIA would do that, now that you've indicated that you think if it would happen it'd be a small group, feel free. As it stands, you're still standing roughly with those legislators that are implying an intent to commit fraud, given your initial reaction.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

It may or may not be fraud. We're talking about intelligence documents here, and there may or may not be any legal obligation to keep them. In fact, classified documents generally have destruction criteria and are supposed to be destroyed in various circumstances.

No, it may still be illegal to destroy these documents - or it may not be - outside of the criteria; that entire area of the intelligence system is somewhat obtuse. The point, however, is that the concept of "fraud" as we normally use it in everyday parlance doesn't necessarily translate well here.

It is entirely possible that these documents would be destroyed as a matter of course and the CIA has been asked to not follow that procedure because of the current circumstances. It's also possible that destruction for CYA purposes would happen, and if it did that might or might not be proper. Intelligence matters always involve leeway for judgement; without that you'll get no useful intellignce or estimates. If you'd like, I can come up with an example intelligence problem for you guys to work here on the board to illustrate what I mean.

All that said, I still wouldn't put it past the CIA to cover its *** improperly. All I'm saying here is don't be hasty to oversimplify this down to "fraud". It's not that clear-cut at all without knowing precisely what documents we're tlking about and how they were to be handled. I doubt very much we'll be privy to that any time soon.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."